


Take Me to Church

by verbaepulchellae



Series: Offer me my deathless death [1]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: ...reunion?, Angst, Assumed Character Death, Background becho, Bellamy PoV, F/M, Ghost!Clarke, Psychological Torture, Season 5 AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-08
Updated: 2018-01-08
Packaged: 2019-03-02 02:15:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13308270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/verbaepulchellae/pseuds/verbaepulchellae
Summary: “Bellamy?”It cuts through the room, crackling through a speaker, static with distance and a weak signal but it’s so unmistakably her that Bellamy’s head whips around looking for her.“Clarke?” Bellamy chokes, can’t help it, because it’sher. Somehow, someway, she’s alive. “Clarke. She’s- she’s here?”“You were right,” Guard One says to Young Dante. “It is him.”“Bellamy,”Clarke coughs over the radio. “Come in.”She sounds awful, voice rough and breath wheezing over the radio. He doesn’t know what to do with himself.





	Take Me to Church

**Author's Note:**

> I've been sitting on this season five au for a WHILE and wasn't sure I'd get around to writing it, but somehow the delay of the premier and the trailer, I finally got my ass in gear. This is a two parter, and if there's anyone to blame, it's @velvet-tread for prompting me to write a reunion and reconnection fic. 
> 
> I think this is pretty dark, even for my standards sooo.... heed the warnings
> 
> Comments and feedback are always appreciated!!

_“The only way to make sure we survive is if you use this too.”_

He still remembers. It’s been two years, but he still remembers Clarke’s sweat drenched face, the bags under her eyes, the fevered heat from her fingers pressing gently against his temple. He’s tried to do right by her. Every decision on the Ark, every day, hour, minute, he’s been careful. Slow. Whatever his gut told him to do, he balanced it with what Clarke would say. He was right in the end, he did have her for that. Even if she had died, swept up in a radiation wave while getting them into space, she had pressed herself into his head and she’d stayed with him.

He’s not sure if things would have ended differently for them even if Clarke had survived. The Eligus ship had docked on the ring and it was a decision for all seven of them. With their comms damaged and radio dead, they’d had no way to hail the other ship, no way to suss out the ship’s intentions or broker a deal. Fight or risk getting wiped out against an unknown enemy-- prisoners from before their time sent into space a hundred years before the bombs dropped. The odds of peaceful intentions were low.

Every last one of them chose fight, and he thinks Clarke would have too. They’d killed four of the first wave, but then Harper caught a bullet in the leg, there were five sight beams on Monty’s chest, Emori was on the floor and Bellamy couldn’t stand to see any of his friends die if there was a way to save them.

The prison cells of Eligus are cold, remind him of his old quarters back on the Ark when power was reduced and rerouted for Alpha station priorities. The crew wasn’t stupid enough to keep them in a single cell, or even cells that bordered each other. He could see Murphy and Echo across from him, two apart and just on the periphery of his sight lines, but the others were spaced down the prison block. The red blink of the camera fixed on the front of his cell door made any discrete communication impossible, but Bellamy’s not even sure what he’d try to sign. He doesn’t have a plan.

 _“Please tell me you have a plan,”_ Clarke whispers in his head and he shakes himself. What would she do? Probably try diplomacy, but that’s never been his strong suit. None of them thinks like Clarke used to, not even Echo, whose tongue is silver from whispering into two Azgeda leaders’ ears. He catches her eye from where she’s resting her head against the bars of her own cell. She looks exhausted, too pale and the black eye from when she’d spit in one of their captor’s faces is in its worst stage- purple and blue and ugly.

“You ok?” Bellamy husks at her. It’s loud enough that the mics on the camera will pick it up, but he doesn’t care. 

“Been better,” Echo admits and she offers him a half hearted smile. 

“Yeah,” Bellamy chuckles. “But who knows, maybe the room service is better than algae.”

“Now you’re just trying to sweet talk me,” Echo rasps back at him. 

“God, I didn’t know that being imprisoned for the seventh time in my life could any get worse, but listening to you two flirt definitely manages it,” Murphy drawls from the back of his cell. “Bellamy, shut up and think of something.”

“Fuck off,” Echo mutters at him, but there’s no heat behind it. She lifts her hand half heartedly towards Bellamy, just a twitch of fingers, and he offers her the same. There’s no way to touch, but just the thought of being close to her is comforting. He’s come to rely on her more than he’d ever thought he would, and sleeping with her, sharing her space in the last year has slowly started the heal the gaping hole Clarke left in his chest. “Best case scenario, what do you think we’ll get?”

“Definitely venison,” Bellamy says, trying to lighten the mood. It’s an old riff of the game they started playing three months into their sojourn on Go-Sci. _If you could eat anything on earth, what would it be?_ It’d made meal times more palatable, let them hope and dream about a time when they could go home. “Maybe an apple.”

“Whiskey,” Murphy groans. “And sweetcakes.”

“Stew,” Echo says. “And mulled wine.”

“Where’s the room service comm?” Murphy asks. “I’m ready to order.”

When their captors do come, it isn’t with food. 

“Him,” a masked guard says, pointing at Bellamy. “Take him.”

Fighting is pointless, but Bellamy does anyone. A blow across the side of his head nearly knocks him off his feet, and a punch to the gut sees him the rest of the way.

“Stop!” He hears Echo shout, still hoarse. 

“It’s ok,” he gasps at her, barely having the breath as the guards haul him to his feet. “It’s ok, Echo.”

“Where are you taking him?” There’s a clang of metal as a baton smacks against the bars of Echo’s cell, just missing her face.

“Hey!” Murphy snarls from his cell but it’s all vain. There’s nothing either of them can do and Bellamy resigns himself to wherever they’re taking him. It’s twists and turns, but even in his bleary stumbling, still seeing stars and the taste of blood fresh in his mouth, he’s pretty sure he doesn’t leave the prison block. That can only mean one thing.

 _“You won’t be alone,”_ Clarke whispers to him, and for a moment he almost feels her by his side, feels her tenacity and bravery and fierce resolve but he doesn’t dare name her. When he’s thrown into the barless cell and the door is slammed behind him, he’s left in darkness except for the blink of the red camera light in the ceiling. He takes a slow breath to try to stem the nausea and hopes he doesn’t have a concussion.

After everything, it’d suck to die in solitary confinement. Bellamy finds his way to a corner and slides down, leaning his head back against the wall and waits.

It doesn’t take long to figure why he’s here.

The men come to him some time in what he thinks must be after a full shift, the time span of a night in space. The lights flicker on and nearly blind him, but Bellamy watches the two men with watering eyes, refuses to give them an advantage.

“Hey, tough guy,” the first one jeers. Neither of them is wearing the masked helmets. There are lines around their eyes and wrinkles in their faces that betray their age as being older than their otherwise youthfulness would suggest. “Bet this is an upgrade from your sorry excuse of a station.”

The glibness stirs something in Bellamy. He knows it, knows the coarse language and belittlement. These men are trained guards, like the ones that harassed his family; the ones he was trained to become. Despite the fatigue from lack of food and sleep, Bellamy pushes himself up to his feet.

“No rowdy neighbors, but can’t say much for the hospitality,” he manages, and the second guard snorts. He’s got lanky, greasy hair and is overly pale, like a younger version of Dante, never having seen sun in his life. 

“Sorry about that,” he says in a slow drawl. “Foods tight and we gotta know it’s worth sharing before we just start dolling it out.”

“Loyalty?” Bellamy asks. “That what you after?”

“To begin with.”

“Bring me back to whoever’s in charge of this tin can and we might be able to work something out.”

“What’d that kid call you?” Guard Number One asks casually studying his grip on his baton. “Barty?”

“What do they call you?” Bellamy asks. “Thing one and thing two?”

He gets hit for that, but he was expecting it. He staggers but catches himself on the wall, pushes himself back up to stand. Guards respond to strength and more often than not sheer pigheadedness. Bellamy’s got that in spades. 

“Nah,” Young Dante says, all to casually. “It was something like ‘Bellamy’ wasn’t it?”

“ _Bellamy?”_ It cuts through the room, crackling through a speaker, static with distance and a weak signal but it’s so unmistakably her that Bellamy’s head whips around looking for her.

“Clarke?” Bellamy chokes, can’t help it, because it’s _her_. Somehow, someway, she’s alive. “Clarke. She’s- she’s here?”

“You were right,” Guard One says to Young Dante. “It is him.”

“ _Bellamy,”_ Clarke coughs over the radio. “ _Come in.”_ She sounds awful, voice rough and breath wheezing over the radio. He doesn’t know what to do with himself.

“You gotta let me see her,” Bellamy says as Clarke’s breath continues to fill the room, wet and rough. “Where is she?”

“Sorry pal,” Young Dante says, with a smirk that says he’s far from sorry. “She ain’t here.”

“ _I’m alive,”_ Clarke chokes and has to pause to catch her breath. “ _For now, anyway. The nightblood, it worked but it’s uh. It’s not looking good.”_

Bellamy feels sick and has to close his eyes.

“Lemme guess, an old girlfriend?” One of them sneers, he’s not sure because all he can hear is Clarke. God, she’s alive. He can hear her, feel her. He steals himself and takes a breath as Clarke coughs wetly again over the radio.

“You have to go to Earth,” Bellamy grits out. “If she survived Primefaya she still may be alive. Please. Whatever you want, I’ll give it to you. But we have to find her.”

“You were right, Johnny. Less than two minutes and he’s begging. I’d say he loved her.”

“Fucked her maybe,” Guard-One-Johnny says cruelly. “Can’t have loved her that much if he was on that piece of shit and she was down on Earth.”

“ _Can anyone hear me?”_ Clarke rasps. “ _Please. Come in. Becca’s lab to Go-Sci. Come in_.” God she sounds scared, frantic. If the radios had just worked, if the comms hadn’t malfunctioned… a million and one _if_ s. 

“What do you want?” Bellamy snarls. “Please. If she’s down there, we need to go get her.”

“You think she’s still alive?” Young Dante laughs. “Kid, we picked up these transmissions two years ago.”

“She could be,” Bellamy manages.

“ _I… I can’t keep talking but I’ll hail again tomorrow. Remember, start with the water. The algae can’t grow unless you start the water systems.”_ The radio cuts out and it’s a momentary relief that Bellamy hadn’t realized he needed, his whole body sagging.

“We got, what, a month of transmissions for this girl? Two?” Guard-One-Johnny asks Young Dante conversationally. 

“Give or take.”

“There’re some good parts in there,” he sniggers. “But why are we telling you when you can hear them for yourself?”

“It’s a trip,” Young Dante agrees. “We figured if you were the same Bellamy, you’d like to hear it too.”

“No, wait-” Bellamy says, the horror of what they’re saying dawning on him. “Don’t-”

 _“Lab to Go-sci,”_ Clarke’s voice crackles to life again. And the guards laugh as Bellamy lunges at them. He gets an electric shock for his efforts, the voltage throwing him back against the wall as they leave and the room plunges to darkness again.

“ _It’s been five days since Primefaya,”_ Clarke says. “ _I think the burns are starting to heal but… food won’t last. Water sources are low. Maybe if I ration...”_

Bellamy scrambles back into his corner and covers his ears because he can’t hear this. He can’t listen to Clarke die. He’s made his peace, had let her go in her final play to save her friends. The radiation would have only hurt for a moment and then she would have felt nothing, it would have been over and done. Her fight would have been over, and even if she never got the chance for peace and calm, she had at least died knowing she had saved her friends. He had lived every day, all 752 of them since they left Earth, trying to make sure her sacrifice wasn’t in vain. 

But he can’t listen this. If she didn’t die then… for days, weeks that he was already mourning her, Clarke was alive and trying to reach him. 

“ _Come on,”_ Clarke says, and there’s a note of desperation in her voice. “ _It had to have worked. I aligned it in time. Bellamy? Raven? Can you please just-”_ her voice breaks on a sob and for a moment it’s just shuddering breaths over the line. “ _I know you made it,”_ Clarke says like she’s saying it for the thousandth time to herself. “ _I know you did. You made the right move, I know you did. You left in time._ ”

“God, stop,” Bellamy groans, he’s not sure to who, but he needs this to stop. He can’t listen to this. 

“ _I’ll hail tomorrow, same time,”_ Clarke promises the silence. “ _I’m sure there are repairs. The water should be running by now. Hopefully you’re sleeping. You have to stay rested, conserve energy. Tomorrow, ok? I’ll hail you tomorrow.”_

It goes on. Bellamy loses track of how long it is, but it’s hours. Clarke’s voice whispers, at times stronger, and times fainter, quietly, desperately begging to hear from them. She names each of them at different points, but the longer the transmissions go on, the more and more she just ends up talking to him. She must have been so lonely, Bellamy thinks a little wildly, pushing himself up despite the pain in his body, pacing to try to drown out the sound. 

“ _I won’t ask you to come back, I know you can’t. I’d just… like to hear your voice.”_ Clarke says at one point through tears. An hour later, (days later? Bellamy has lost track of how many starts and stops, beginnings and ends of new transmissions that he’s heard,) Clarke is almost beside herself with rage, snarling into the radio. 

“ _Why do I have to die? Why won’t you fucking answer me? What am I being punished for now? Tell me! Fucking tell me. Don’t- don’t- I can’t take the silence. I can’t. God. Fuck you. Fuck you, fuck you, fuckyoufuckyoufuckyou--“_ Bellamy yells himself hoarse just to drown it out.

“ _Sorry,”_ Clarke rasps at the start of her next transmission, voice weak but self-deprecating. “ _I’m either crying or yelling these days. At least you didn’t hear me last night, I stubbed my toe and couldn’t stop laughing. I’m a mess. You always were cleaning up my messes. But I guess I cleaned up yours too. I just wish-- well, if wishes were rockets, I’d be up there with you.”_ Another hour later, and she’s starving and delirious. 

“ _I don’t want to die,”_ Clarke murmurs. “ _I don’t want to die, Bellamy. You’re coming back. Soon, I think. I wanted… I wanted to see you again. But I can’t,”_ her voice breaks. “ _I’m not going to make it. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”_

The last transmission is almost a sickening relief. He knows it’s the last the second Clarke hails, he voice is faint and distant, her words sluggish even as she rambles and there are long, painful pauses mid sentence. 

“ _Bellamy,”_ Clarke says. “ _It’s ok,”_ she says like she’s soothing him, soothing herself. “ _It’s all blue light now. It’s ok… remember the MRAs need to… “_ she cuts out for a long time and Bellamy grits his teeth. “ _You can’t hear me can you? You would have answered me. I know you would have, I know… you always did. Stupid. God, I’m so stupid… if you’re dead… no, no, not dead, not you. Stupid.”_

For a long time it’s just Clarke’s breath, ragged and shallow, pained. “ _Don’t let Jasper… no…no…. He’s already… It’s cold, Bellamy. I thought it was summer. I thought… there was fire._

“ _I’ll hail tomorrow_ ,” she whispers, but Bellamy knows there isn’t another transmission that follows this one. Not without some miracle and he slams his fist into the wall. But before she cuts out, her voice quavers back. “ _I… no, this isn’t goodbye.”_

Bellamy’s sobs rack his body in the darkness. He left her die and she had survived god knows how long before she finally starved to death, lonely and waiting for him to answer her. He cries harder than he thought he could, doesn’t care that the camera continues to blink above him. He feels feverish, weak, like he’s been sick for a long time, hunger pinching his stomach, but can’t imagine eating after listening to his best friend die slowly. He cries until there’s nothing left and he sits and waits for the guards. They’ll come back now, now that they’ve forced him to listen to Clarke die. Maybe they think they’ve broken him. He tries to gather himself because he needs his wits about him, he needs Clarke’s calm voice in his head, though he’s not sure he deserves it anymore. But she had trusted him to the end, and he still had a promise to keep. 

The guards don’t come. At one point, a slot in the door is opened and a ration of food is pushed through. Bellamy swallows it in fast, painful gulps. It’s definitely not algae. It’s flakey and nauseatingly sweet in his mouth, clings to his throat and makes him gag, but he manages to keep it down. Anything is better than nothing.

He thinks he starts to drift off at one point, huddled in a corner and exhaustion finally creeping up on him. He dreams of Go-Sci and the woods below, and Clarke burning up in Primefaya-

“ _Bellamy?_ ” He jerks away and answers “Clarke-” before he can help himself, a wash of hope, relief filling him. She's alive. “ _Bellamy, come in. I’m alive,”_ Clarke chokes. There’s the same pause to drag in air. “ _For now, anyway. The nightblood, it worked but it’s uh. It’s not looking good.”_

He realizes what’s happening and the relief and hope and wash of joy drops with his stomach, leaving him cold and reeling. “No!” He’s on his feet without knowing he had the strength to stand, pounding to door. “No, not again. Turn it off.”

“ _Can anyone hear me?”_ Clarke rasps. “ _Please. Come in. Becca’s lab to Go-Sci. Come in_.”

“Fuck,” Bellamy groans and stumbles back from the door. He’s not stupid, he knows no one’s coming. 

“ _I… I can’t keep talking but I’ll hail again tomorrow._ "

It goes on. The transmissions playing again, and somehow it’s worse this time. Bellamy pounds his fists into the wall until they’re bloody just to try to drown out his best friend’s voice. Around the time she breaks down crying the first time again, he throws up. The cloying sweetness and the rancid taste make him realize what’s happening. This is torture, and he played right into. 

“I’m sorry,” he tells Clarke’s voice. “I left you behind. I’m so sorry.” 

“ _It’s so quiet_ ,” Clarke tells him. “ _I never thought the silence would drive me crazy.”_

This time when the transmissions end, Bellamy goes straight to the door. 

“I’ll talk, ok?” He yells, pounding as hard as he can, praying someone’s listening. “Whatever you want, as long as my people stay alive, you can have whatever you want.”

“ _You have to use this too,”_ Clarke tells him, pressing her fingers gently against his temple and Bellamy recoils from the memory. His head is what left Clarke to slowly starve to death on a burnt up planet. No, no, that’s not right. His head is what saved his friends, his people, countless times. Clarke had been with him then. 

“ _Bellamy?”_ The speaker crackles back to life. “ _Bellamy, come in.”_

It goes on. They let him rest, but never for the same amount of time. He’ll fall into exhausted, haunted sleep only to jerk awake, bleary and shouting for them to make it stop while Clarke’s voice echos around him. The transmissions never change. It’s always the same, Clarke hailing him desperately until she dies. Over and over and over again. Her voice becomes pain, becomes sickly sweet nausea that leaves him heaving and and shaking. He finds himself answering her, sometimes, until he has to press his battered hands over his mouth to muffle his words. It won’t do either of them good at this point.

He loses track of time. The room is dark, stinks of vomit and sweat and poor plumbing. Clarke’s voice runs into itself. It could have been days that he’s been here, it could have been weeks, he doesn’t know.

In the quiet, too afraid to give in to sleep for fear of what will greet him and what will wake him, he feels the air shift and he turns his head, blinking delirium from his eyes. 

Clarke crouches next to him, young and beautiful and the way he always liked to remember her, having chosen to come back to her people. “Hey,” she whispers at him. 

“You’re dead,” Bellamy tells her. “I’m- fuck- I’m so sorry. Clarke-”

“Shh,” she whispers. She’s not real. Of course she’s not, but he can practically feel her cool fingers when they touch his temple. “They only way we survive is if you use this.”

“How?” he rasps.

Clarke smiles at him sadly. “You’ve got such a big heart, Bellamy,” she says it like she knows how much it hurts him. “Use this too,” she says once again touching his head. “Use this too.”

She fades as Bellamy sleep yawns below his consciousness and sucks him down.

“ _Bellamy?_ ’ She’s dead, Bellamy tells himself, gritting his teeth so hard he gives himself a tensions headache. “ _Bellamy, come in.”_

Clarke died two years ago on Earth, and he can’t save his people, their people, if he drives himself insane with grief. He knows that she’s dead.

“ _I’m alive_.” She’s dead. It’s just radio waves. 

“ _For now anyway.”_ She’s dead. It’s just an echo.

“ _Can you please just-”_ She’s dead. It’s just noise. 

“ _Fuck you--”_ It’s just noise. 

“ _I don’t want to die.”_ It’s just noise.

“ _It’s ok.”_

It’s ok. It’s just noise. 

.

.

.

Sunlight catches Bellamy in the face as he steps back onto Earth for the first time in six years. The air is pungent and rich, just as potent as it was the first time he stepped of the dropship all those years ago. Charmaine had found this spot of land as the radiation cloud coverage cleared, and it’s beautiful, looks like the death wave never managed to touch it. He doesn’t think about _if onlys_ , he hasn’t in so many years. 

Echo and Emori are laughing and crying all at once, both flat on the ground and he shoulders his rifle to join the semi circle his friends have formed around them. Raven grins at him and punches him lightly on the shoulder, Monty is staring up at the blue sky in wonder. He’s done it, _they’ve_ done it, made it back to Earth, alive and well, and it looks like they’ll be enough natural resources that they’ll actually be able to start up an encampment. After that… well, Polis and the bunker.

There’s a shout, suddenly. A shot fired. The seven of them tense and whirl around to see a dark, hooded figure sprinting at them from the tree line, where a moment ago there had only been undergrowth and the hint of bluebells. Raven must understand what’s happening before he does, because she shouts something, and then the figure is on them. It barrels into Bellamy, smelling like leather and fresh rain and gunpowder and the hood falls back as a damp face is pressed into the crook of Bellamy’s neck. 

Short, blonde hair is all he sees for a moment and then, “ _Bellamy.”_

His whole body goes rigid, and all he can see is darkness. All he can taste is rancid sweetness in his mouth and deep, gut wrenching, dangerous grief in his chest. Bellamy staggers and the figure draws back, laughing a little, scrubbing at her face. 

“Bellamy, it’s me,” she says again, looking up at him and for a dizzying, terrifying moment he’s 23 again and Clarke is alive and by his side and Earth is full of promises and the hope that things are going to get better. "It's-."

But she’s dead. She’s dead, and the only way he keeps his people alive is to use his head. 

This is just noise.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and kudos are always most welcome.


End file.
